We believe all women can embrace who they are, can define their future, and can change the world.
Al-Hasaniya Moroccan Women’s Centre serves the health, welfare, educational and cultural needs of Moroccan and Arabic-speaking women and their families resident in the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea and London-wide. Al-Hasaniya consists of an all female staff group.
Our Mission
Al-Hasaniya Moroccan Women’s Center seeks to serve the health, welfare, educational and cultural needs of Moroccan and Arabic-speaking women and their families resident in the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea and London-wide.
Our Vision
Ultimately Al-Hasaniya’s work seeks to encourage and enable the women to integrate and participate fully in their communities outside the centre, with the long term objective of helping to prevent current problems from perpetuating themselves in future generations.
Statement from Al-Hasaniya Moroccan Women's Centre on Migrant Survivors of Domestic Abuse
For over forty years, Al-Hasaniya Moroccan Women's Centre has supported Moroccan and Arabic-speaking women experiencing domestic abuse, many of whom have insecure immigration status. Our experience is unequivocal: victims and survivors are far more likely to suffer in silence than to misuse the systems designed to protect them.
We are deeply concerned by recent media coverage that risks framing migrant survivors as suspects rather than victims. This narrative is not only misleading, but it is also dangerous. It threatens to deter some of the most vulnerable women in our communities from seeking the help they urgently need, and it hands, once again, perpetrators a powerful new tool of control.
The reality we see every day is one of underreporting, not abuse of the system. Women stay silent out of fear: fear of deportation, fear of not being believed, fear of losing their children, fear of being left with no support. Perpetrators routinely exploit immigration status as a means of coercion, knowing it keeps victims and survivors trapped. Any suggestion that false claims are widespread is directly contradicted by the evidence and by the lived experience of frontline services like ours.
While any misuse of protective provisions is unacceptable and should be addressed, isolated cases must not be weaponised to discredit the overwhelming majority of genuine victims and survivors who depend on these pathways to reach safety. Provisions such as the Migrant Victims of Domestic Abuse Concession (MVDAC) and the Domestic Violence Indefinite Leave to Remain (DVILR) route are not loopholes, they are life-saving safeguards that exist because of hard-won advocacy by the sector and they must be protected.
Access to support for migrant victims and survivors remains dangerously limited. No recourse to public funds, language barriers and the scarcity of culturally appropriate services already place enormous obstacles in the way of women seeking help. Harmful public narratives add yet another.
Al-Hasaniya stands in full solidarity with all victims and survivors of domestic abuse. We stand alongside our sector partners in challenging narratives that undermine survivor credibility and we call on media, policymakers and commissioners to engage with the evidence and with the expertise of frontline specialist services before amplifying stories that cause real harm to real women.
We will not be silent, and we will not stop advocating for the dignity, safety and rights of every woman we serve.
Imane El Hakimi
Chair of AlHasaniya
"In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility." - You Learn By Living (Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, 1960)"